Southern California -- this just in

HIV tests negative for porn actors who performed with 'Patient Zero'

October 22, 2010 | 6:23
pm

Officials at the San Fernando Valley clinic where a porn actor tested HIV-positive earlier this month said Friday that tests showed no other actors who performed with the individual have tested HIV-positive.

The actor tested HIV-positive Oct. 9 at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, or AIM, in Sherman Oaks. Afterward, clinic officials created a quarantine list of performers who had worked with the porn actor -- known as "Patient Zero" -- and began testing them.

Late Friday, clinic officials notified Vivid Entertainment co-founder Steven Hirsch that test results came back for all of the performers who worked with the porn actor, called "first-generation" exposures.

"We can confirm that all performers who have been tested as a result of being exposed have tested negative," Hirsch said.

Vivid and several other porn production companies suspended filming after reports that the actor had tested positive.

Hirsch said Friday he still planned to wait for final test results for one of the first-generation performers to come back in the next two weeks before he starts filming again. "We are just being super-cautious," he said.

Hirsch said AIM officials would not tell him how many people are on the quarantine list or how many first- and second-generation exposures there are "due to confidentiality." Clinic officials also have refused to confirm rumors that the actor is a man who worked in both gay and straight productions.

Hirsch said he trusts the private AIM clinic to provide quality services to performers and accurate testing information to producers.

"We are certainly encouraged by today’s news," he said. "We feel very confident that this has been contained."

AIM staff did not return phone calls Friday. A spokesman for the county public health department said it had no new information Friday.

Ged Kenslea, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Network, which has pushed for more enforcement of condom use, testing and other safe-sex practices in the porn industry, said he was "certainly glad that no one else appears to be infected" but that this is not the time to "let the industry off the hook for irresponsible behavior."

"I don’t know if the person was infected in or outside the industry, but I don’t think the industry should be willing to sacrifice even one person to these infections," Kenslea said.